National Ownership and Hr Practices In Uk Greenfield Sites

This article reports research on the influence of country of ownership on HR policy and practice in UK establishments. It is hypothesised that establishments will conform to national stereotypes in the practices they adopt and that establishments owned by firms from the USA, Japan and Germany, will, albeit in different ways, adopt more HR practices and report better outcomes than their UK counterparts. the research is based on the Third Workplace Industrial Relations Survey and on a sample of new establishments, opened in the 1980s. Analysis of the data from the 1990 Workplace Industrial Relations Survey finds no evidence that foreign-owned firms are more likely to adopt HR practices. the study of new workplaces finds that UK-owned establishments are as enthusiastic as the foreign-owned in their adoption of HR policy and practice. There is also evidence to support, at least partially, the stereotypes of the American and Japanese approaches. However German-owned establishments do not conform to the expected home country pattern. They are the least likely to adopt HR practices and also report poorer HR and employee relations outcomes. the study challenges the assumption that foreign-owned firms in the UK are more likely to adopt HR practices and indicates that we must be cautious in applying stereotypical national approaches to HRM both among foreign and UK establishments.     

Manufacturing environments in South Korea,Japan and the United States of America: A note

This paper reports a comparative analysis of the manufacturing facilities and the degree of automation of major manufacturing corporations in South Korea, Japan and the United States. We suggest that South Korea is behind Japan and the United States in manufacturing technology, but is aggressively incorporating automated equipment or processes into the manufacturing system.This project has been supported by a grant from the Korea Chamber of Commerce and Industry.     

Capital mobility and environmental standards: Racing to the bottom with multiple tax instruments

This paper investigates the possibility of a ‘race to the bottom,’ under which intergovernmental competition for mobile capital leads to inefficiently lax environmental standards. A model is constructed in which independent welfare-maximizing governments regulate pollution emissions from production activities, while taxing residential labor and mobile capital to finance public good expenditures. A race is shown to exist in the sense that a ‘central planner’ could improve welfare in every country by requiring that each government tighten its environmental standards. The analysis also shows that the tax-financed public good is underprovided in equilibrium, but it is argued that this problem may be less severe than the race-to-the-bottom problem.     

Failure Prediction: Evidence from Korea

This study is an attempt to construct and test a distress classification model for Korean companies. Utilizing a sample of 34 distressed firms from the recent 1990-1993 period and a matched (by industry and year) sample of non-failed firms, we observe the classification accuracy of two models. Both models utilize measures of firm size, asset turnover, solvency and leverage with one model available for testing only on publicly traded companies and one model applicable to all public and private entities. We observe excellent classification accuracy based on data from the first two years prior to distress. And, although the accuracy drops off after t -2, the models still provide effective early warnings of distress in many cases. The results of this study are of particular relevance in the current financial market scenario of increased deregulation and greater individual financial institution decision making. It is somewhat ironic for us to be proposing the use of a financial distress early-warning model given the current robust economic growth and low bankruptcy rate in Korea. But, the financial problems in Japan are a sobering reminder that high growth can be followed by financial excesses, increased business failures and large loan losses.     

R&D project team climate and team performance in Korea: A multidimensional approach

This study examined the relationship between R&D team climate and team performance in a developing context, Korea. Given the fragmented results of existing studies in advanced countries, which explored largely the effects of individual dimensions of team climate on team performance, this study focused on the interaction effects among multiple dimensions of team climate. The interaction effects can produce seemingly contradictory or paradoxical bivariate associations between each climate dimension and team performance. Both bivariate and multivariate analyses, using data from 80 R&D project teams in both government-sponsored research institutes and private R&D centres in Korea, revealed the following results. 1. Four dimensions of R&D team climate—autonomy, cohesiveness, change orientation, work pressure—were not positively associated with team performance. Rather, autonomy was found to have a significant negative relationship. 2. Interaction effects of each team climate dimension were partially borne out. When the change orientation or work pressure of a team was high, autonomy had a positive impact on team performance. Otherwise, autonomous team climate deteriorated performance of the team. However, interaction effects between cohesiveness and change orientation or work pressure were not found significant. 3. There appeared three clusters of R&D teams with similar climate characteristics. Teams with high autonomy but a low change orientation exhibited a lower level of performance than the other two clusters—one with low autonomy but high change orientation and work pressure, and the other with a medium level of autonomy and change orientation. The results implied that a holistic team climate, as well as an individual aspect of climate, had a significant impact on team performance. A configuration approach considering interaction effects among various climate aspects would be beneficial for the development of high performing R&D teams.     

Vertical Integration and Competition Policy

Vertical integration can be a source of significant strategic advantage for firms, whether in the form of backward integration to gain security of some important supply or of forward integration to ensure adequate distribution of products or services. It may have profound effects on the competitive processes in an industry, substantially modify the threats from new entrants or substitute products, and mitigate the power of suppliers or buyers. Yet for exactly these reasons, vertical integration causes great concern to competition authorities. A number of consumer products markets with vertical ties have caused such disquiet to the UK's Office of Fair Trading (OFT) in recent years that they have been referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission (MMC) for further investigation. These include beer, petrol and soft drinks. The three cases illustrate the nature and importance of the strategic advantage derived from vertical integration. They also illustrate the concern competition authorities feel about vertical integration, and provide lessons for firms regarding the objections that may be raised towards their trading arrangements.     

Nonlinear regression for unit root models with autoregressive errors

This paper shows that the nonlinear least squares estimator for unit root models has the limiting distribution free of nuisance parameters and is more efficient than the augmented Dickey–Fuller estimator when the sum of coefficients for lagged variables is negative.     

Inventory management under uncertainty: A financial theory for the transactions motive

This paper examines the effects of risk aversion and output market uncertainty on optimal inventory policy decisions for a transactions demand for inventory using the capital asset pricing theory. The paper shows that (1) the optimal order quantity of the risk-adjusted value-maximizing firm is smaller than that of the expected-profit-maximizing one and (2) the greater the firm's output market uncertainty, the smaller its optimal order quantity, where the output market uncertainty is defined as the relative volatility of the demand for the firm's output.